Smartboard Saturday: Nonsense Words

It is a fine line that most teachers walk  to teach the skills that are assessed, but not "teach to the test." In our state, we use DIBELS as an assessment. During one section of this test, students are asked to sound out or read nonsense words. This is a difficult task for many students, mainly because they want to recode the nonsense word into a "real" word.

On a tip from a friend, I started to use my Smartboard to do quick nonsense word exercises. In the Gallery of the Smart Notebook software, there are consonant and vowel dice. I pulled three dice in a CVC format onto a blank page, and let me children touch and roll. They LOVED it. We sound out all the sounds, recode into the word, and discuss if it is a real word or a silly word. Now, it is part of our transition from Morning Meeting to our Reading Block.

Tip: Use the search bar to find specific things in the Gallery, i.e. type "dice" to find CVC , blank, number, or dot dice.